Prom Tragedy: Many facets of post-traumatic expression

Prom Nite: the all hallow's eve of all parents; the light at the end of the tunnel of childhood....

...the first crossing over from teenager to responsible adult. At best.

Gratification of parent as she peaks in the door to see the resting body of her now near grown son or daughter. Devastation as the phone call comes, the opposite...tragic calamity; calamitous tragedy. The silence of all the midnights thereafter.

Rage and fury. Furious rage. Anger ballooned to infest the air around and heaven feels the wrath. The unfairness of it all. Life cut short by mere earthly physics. Pathways converging never meant to converge at all, thrown together by some unexplained minute a delay or a rush. There in that unexplained lost minute, the physics were set in motion and in that crush of time, the unthinkable meeting with the unthinkable that has always waited for us out there.

He grins and the human falls in. Two parents, one on each side of the river - each calling to the newly dead pleasantly, but with voices so anguished over the years that they are only faint stirs as greater forces draw me in to silence and overpowering song simultaneously. I cannot decide which I like better. I drift into a rainbow that turns immediately gold and find a sandstorm of friendly particles, brushing me softly with tails that feel like feathers.

They leave rainbow colors behind on my skin and I feel sheer joy of being, lighter than air, and safer than under an eagle's wing. I am enraptured.

There seems to be something missing. Something I remember as heavy, but I cannot identify it. It's like putting down a burden that I have carried a long time. Like a student who carries a bag of books and belongings for sometime 16-20 years, as I recall. I do not feel the heaviness, only the lack of it. I cannot name it.

Letters dance in my mind, but I cannot say them. I remember they made words, but I cannot think them. My mind releases ideas like bubbles from a wand, and nothing is worth capturing. My thoughts fly on wings and exist only like butterflies for awhile. I never think of them again.

I am learning quickly. They said on earth I always did. I am happy here where I have only to think what I wish and I am immersed in the experience. The knowing is easy and growth is triple-fold compared to my old home.

I am told I may soon see my father who has become a high ranking shephard among the herders. He is, in fact, a shephard of souls; a guiding sort of light; a friend to have on this side of the river, a friend with many friends, an infinite spiritual connection, my father is, to those ever growing numbers of souls sorting their thoughts through the same bubble wands as I felt.

....This is a continued fiction piece dedicated to exploration of spiritual "lands" beyond our perception where any number of experiences may occur if only one can imagine.

This is dedicated to Ursula LeGuin's work and the work of Scott Peck, M.D.

Screwed without Crude....

A boat, set in mud, anchored in mud.

A student recently painted this translation of a photograph. It disturbed me.

Look at it for awhile. I am curious if it disturbs you...

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I believve it disturbs me because it reminds me of the state of our nation. Stuck in the mud.

Mired in the grim grime of universal war. Blood, rot, guns, guts, and the dollars to finance this science fiction world in which we've come to live, have become my angst. Not my personal angst, of course, as angst is that which is a collectively low level of worry, but a world in angst I do join as I "feel" the black hole of hatred and lust, sucking us in and drying the planet until she cracks.

I see the black, the white, and the gray in between and it's mostly all gray. Gray is foggy. Gray is difficult to see through. Dusk is gray, and tinted gray that offers illusions and mirages; but never the oasis. There is no oasis to be found in this war except by those who finance the world and own the oases they keep safe with their own jet bombers.

So now it is the oil.....if this war were not about lust of the black gold, then we would not be, as a people, on the brink of disruption by lack of oil....never in history has such greed over natural resources been so evidenced and inevitable. Victor Victorious.

I say that to say this, as I am no expert on oil except to note it is a resource much needed by people who have few dollars; but, controlled by people who have many dollars. Can the need for oil bring a nation to its knees? We're screwed for crude.

My thinking is that I should be hightailing to high ground somewhere that food grows and stock can be raised should all the trucks stop rolling and all the food stop being delivered to the grocery stores. Then, when the sleeping cells awake....